The Enterprising Ms. Vy
I love a good story about an entrepreneurial person who makes something out of nothing. That’s the story of Ms. Vy, whom I learned about years ago when we first visited Hoi An, a beautiful UNESCO World Heritage town in the middle of Vietnam.
Ms. Vy was born in Hoi An and grew up hanging out at her parents’ and grandparents’ restaurant and noodle shop, where she learned to cook.
Eventually, in 1992, she opened her first restaurant initially called Little Mermaid. The restaurant was pretty bare bones; it didn’t even have a menu.
Back then, electricity was only available for a few hours during the day, so restaurants didn’t stay open at night, and hardly any tourists visited.
One day, a couple of tourists came in to check out what she was cooking and said they’d come back for dinner. So, she opened the restaurant for them that night, hoping there would be electricity.
When they arrived, her father showed them the ingredients they had and asked them how they wanted it cooked. They had no preferences, so Ms. Vy just did what she usually did: served them fish with a ginger and lemongrass marinade, along with a few other dishes.
The couple loved the food, so they helped her write down the dish’s names, and that became the first menu.
She also learned a lot from her restaurant’s visitors and worked hard to make them happy. She tells this story about a homesick Italian couple who wanted pasta, but there was no pasta in Hoi An.
“I took them to the market. They saw spinach and said I could make pasta with it. Vietnam was like Cuba back then; there was no source of outside information, so this was new to me. I made penne using tapioca flour, so it had a sticky texture. The only cheese available was Laughing Cow cheese. They showed me how to make tomato sauce to go with the pasta, which became a signature dish.”
American backpackers taught her how to make a banana-and-peanut-butter shake, while French tourists introduced her to crepes. Since there was no chocolate, she used condensed milk and cacao for the chocolate sauce.
Did it pay off? Today, she runs ten restaurants in town — including Cargo, Morning Glory, and Vy’s Marketplace — along with the Maison Vy Hotel and a well-regarded cooking school.
I think the menu has broadened beyond Vietnamese, and there’s a certain amount of catering to tourists with Western tastes, who have inundated Hoi An.
Even so, it’s worth a lunch. The interiors are charming, with lots of colonial-style dark wood, hanging silk lanterns, and open kitchens so you can watch the action.
She’s also written a cookbook, Taste Vietnam, that has sold over 35,000 copies.
I’ve taken her cooking classes a few times, and they are not only fun — you walk away actually knowing how to make some of the area’s classic recipes.
People often wonder how a person like Ms. Vy succeeded the way she did. Believe me, there’s no magic formula. It’s all about an obsession with building your dream and working until there are no more hours in a day. I can understand it.
We built three tech start-ups from nothing using the same formula: obsession and hard work. I admire people like that because I know how hard it was to become an “overnight” success.